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Tuesday, June 05, 2007

This is a lovely bit of "right to die" mumbo-jumbo from the left (actually, the Huffington Post): (my comments in bold)

Russell ShawDisability Advocates, Get Over Your Fear of Us Right-To-Die Folks

I live in Oregon, the only U.S. state in which physician-assisted suicide is legal.

I recall a conversation I had a few years ago with one of the major advocates for this legislation. She told me that some of the most vocal opponents were disability rights advocates.

In this, the week that admittedly creepy Jack Kevorkian is released from prison, we're hearing murmurings again from the disability community.

According to the website DiversityInc:

"The furor over Kevorkian's release is being led by Not Dead Yet, a national disability organization that views assisted suicide as the "ultimate form of discrimination (that) has been ignored by most media and courts." The organization states that "For some, a disabled person's suicidal cry for help was ignored, misinterpreted, or even exploited by the right-to-die movement."

Admittedly, I don't have the immediate personal sensitivity to this issue that some disabled persons might have. But as to physician-assisted suicide, I have noticed the cascading inefficacy of pain killer pharmaceuticals administered to some dying friends and loves in their last days on Earth. Look, pain control is NOT an issue. At all. There are plenty of drugs that will make you pain-free. Now, they may be in doses that are dangerous, or may impair cognitive function/breathing/etc., but if you're dying, what do you want? To be sane and in pain, or out of it and pain-free? Becoming a junkie isn't a major concern at this point. To say that pain is THE issue is, um, wrong.

From where I sit, I don't see how compassion in dying has anything to do with disability rights. For those of us who want to offer dignity oh the magic word!to those whose pain can no longer be nursed which is NOT possible, at all, the fact that our society too often treats the disabled as second-class citizens also is a powerful assault on our humane sensitivities.If you want to stop treating us like second-class citizens, then build more restrooms for us. Don't stare at IV ports or insulin pumps or wheelchairs. Don't ask stupid questions. Do/don't do a lot of things. But killing isn't really an option.

Could the real issue for some disability advocates be that ongoing life experiences have convinced you that able-bodied citizens feel you are "in the way," and that right-to-die types have as the ultimate goal more tools to get you, our disabled brothers and sisters, "out of the way?" Well not to put too fine a point on it...but let's look at it this way: the number of childrne born with Downs Syndrome is decreasing. It's not because we've found a cure, kids.

While I don't have the life experience to see things from your perspective, I have to tell the disability advocate community that such a mind-set strikes me as a bit paranoid. I liken it to the fear in some minority communities that some forms of contraception are really efforts at medically sanctioned genocide. Have you read Margaret Sanger? Have you read early abortion-rights literature? That's what it was, honey. It was an attempt to limit the growth of minority, specifically black, populations. And they weren't exactly subtle about it.